Right now we are in the market to rent a house with a maximum budget of $1000 per calendar month and frankly we are finding it tough going; most available homes in the $800 – $1000 are pretty poor in Wichita. One house we looked at was priced at $1000 per month with a $1000 deposit; and the place was filthy; the owner said he didn’t want to clean while he was showing the home, seriously? There was mold behind the toilet in the basement and one of the bedroom windows downstairs was held shut by a piece of wood; cracked tiles in the family room and holes in the wall! Suffice to say we weren’t going to pay $2000 initially and $1000 per month to this slumlord! Luckily, Rytech of Middle Tennessee tackled the problem quickly and efficiently.
The issue we’re having is that we will have to pay upwards of $1200 per month for what we want; which is too much; for $1200 per month; the house would have to be perfect with all modern appliances including washer/dryer and top quality finishes; but that is not the case; often these $1200 houses are dated and in poor condition. We have looked at buying and right now that is out of the question because we are in a phase of rebuilding our credit; but researching buying has shown that we could get a $150,000 home for a monthly payment of $960 over 30 years with 5% interest.
The reason we are looking for a new home is because our current landlord has taken six weeks to get someone to look at a leak in our master bathroom; we reported the issue back in mid December and it’s getting looked at tomorrow, January 30th. The condo is also too small for our needs; we had to move in a hurry which limited our options; but we were going to stick out the lease before this (lack of) maintenance issue arose, now we’re going to break the lease as soon as we’re ready to move. As things stand, we have no faith that any maintenance issues will be resolved in timely manner!
The problems have arisen because the landlord is absent; he lives out of state and we didn’t have a phone number for him until recently, also the people he uses for maintenance and property management are seemingly unreliable. The property manager seemingly decided to not bother with this property without any sort of notification so we have been contacting her without getting a single reply. From now on I will only rent direct from an owner who lives locally and has a valid local phone number, I don’t want to be put in this situation again, it’s simply not acceptable!